The
following interview with William Blum was conducted in Washington, D.C. on
March 31, 2006. Gary Corseri [Q] asked the questions of Blum [A].

Q.
In his January 19, 2006 audio tape message to the world, Osama bin Laden
stated: “If Bush carries on with his lies and oppression, it would be
useful for you to read the book, Rogue State.” Then, he quoted the
line in which you write that you would end US interference in the nations
of the world as soon as you become president. Now, I’ve read Rogue
State, and I know that your projected first four days in office would
actually be even more interesting than that. How do you conceive the first
four days of a Blum Administration?

A.
The
first day, I’ll apologize -- publicly and sincerely -- to all the widows
and orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, to all the many millions
of other victims of American imperialism. I would announce to the world
that America’s global military interventions have come to an end. The
second day, I would tell Israel that it is no longer the 51st
state, but, oddly enough, a foreign country. On the third day I would
reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay
reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American
bombings, invasions and sanctions. There would be more than enough money.
One year’s US military budget is equal to more than $20,000 per hour for
every hour since Jesus was born. On the fourth day, I’d be assassinated.

Q.
Soon
after bin Laden’s endorsement, Rogue State leapt from below 200,000
on Amazon’s book list of sales, to number 21. Some media people asked if
you had any regrets about OBL’s recommendation -- if you wanted to
renounce it -- and you stated that you did not. You’ve called the public
attention
your fifteen minutes of fame. It’s now 10 weeks since the bin Laden
tape. How are things going? Are you still enjoying your 15 minutes?

A.
It
probably lasted about a month, a month and a half. It was very nice while
it lasted. When I think about it, the fact that I had the ear and the eyes
of tens of millions of Americans who normally would never hear anything
from me, or about me, and I could say things they normally are never
exposed to at all by the mass media . . . it really was marvelous. On a
personal level it was very time-consuming; I had to put aside all kinds of
things. But on a political level, it was excellent.

Q.
So,
the attention is tapering off?

A.
Oh,
it’s gone … I mean, I still have the occasional interview, but I had those
before --

Q.
Do you
have any intention to renounce bin Laden’s endorsement?

A.
No.
The political value of it outweighs any other consideration -- getting me
on the mass media . . . as I’ve said to some of the people who interviewed
me, I’m part of a movement which has the very ambitious goal of slowing
down -- if not stopping -- the American Empire. To do that, we need to
reach the American people. And to reach them we need access to the mass
media. So, for that reason, I’m very thankful.

Q.
Why
did bin Laden single out your book among all the others?

A.
Partly
because it was available in Arabic. I assume he read the Arabic edition.
Partly because it says things which he’s been saying -- that the reason
for anti-American terrorist acts have to do with past American foreign
policy, not with American religion or secular government or American music
or films or television. It’s about our foreign policy. It’s what we do to
the world that has created all these anti-American terrorists.

Q.
That reminds me of an interview you gave to Guerrilla Radio in Halifax,
Canada, posted at CounterPunch on March 8, 2003. You said: “If the
U.S. carries out the war in the face of worldwide opposition, it may be
the beginning of the end for the Empire. And I hope it is.” Well, we’re
now into the fourth year of a much worse war than the lightning-swift
operation we were promised -- do you still hope and believe this is the
“beginning of the end for the Empire”?

A.
Oh
yeah! The Empire is on its way out. The opposition is growing all the
time. The numbers of Americans will before too long reach a critical mass
and explode. I don’t know exactly what form that explosion will take, but
it’s going to happen. The Republicans are losing the support of many
leading conservatives. There must be ten leading conservatives who have
come out in the past few months in no uncertain terms condemning the Bush
Administration and their foreign policy. The end can’t be too far away.
Hopefully, they will not take the world with them.

Q.
That great sucking sound will not be the world going down the drain?

A.
It
will be Bush and Rumsfeld and Rice -- and their ilk -- sucking down all
the way to hell!

Q.
How long will it take?

A.
Who
knows …

Q.
But you expect to see it?

A.
Yes,
even at my advanced age, I expect to see it.

Q.
You’re
72 now?

A.
I just
turned 73.

Q.
You’ve
described the 9/11 attacks as “an understandable retaliation against US
foreign policy,” while making it clear that this is not a justification
for them. One of the debts I owe you -- and I’ve now read Rogue State,
Freeing the World to Death and
Killing Hope
-- is that you contextualize and make comprehensible so much of modern
history. In Killing Hope, especially, you tell the story of what
Barbara Tuchman called “the march of folly,” -- but, here, it’s our unique
folly, that of a superpower which enjoyed so much of the world’s good will
after World War II, then squandered it. In your books, you roam the globe,
and show with an investigative reporter’s eye for detail, and an
historian’s grasp of context, how our repeated interventions in the
affairs of other nations brought catastrophe and tragedy to them and,
often, to ourselves, as well. Focusing on the Middle East, can you walk us
through the idea of “understandable retaliation”? Can you help us to see
our foreign policy through the insurgent’s eye, the terrorist in
Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan?

A.
In my
book, Rogue State, I have a list of some of the lesser “nice”
things done to the Middle East since the 1980s -- so we’re talking about
some 25 years. I have about 20 items on this list. Just to name a few: the
support of corrupt and tyrannical governments from the Shah of Iran to the
Saudis; the shooting down of two Libyan planes in 1981; the bombing of
Libya in 1986; the bombing of an Iranian ship in 1987; shooting down an
Iranian passenger plane in 1988 . . . it goes on -- more bombings, more
downing of planes, attacking ships, the habitual support of Israel, the
habitual condemnation of Palestinian resistance to this, ending with the
devastation and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003.
That’s a small sample of what we’ve done in the Middle East in the past 20
years or so. So, it’s not surprising that many people there would be
hell-bent on some kind of retaliation.

Q.
You
also have an extensive list of votes at the United Nations, where we’ve
practically stood alone, or with a single ally -- more often than not,
Israel -- against the wishes of the world.

A.
Against the wishes of the other members of the U.N., certainly -- 140 to
1, 139 to 2. Dozens and dozens of examples. And it’s not just the voting
where we say “to hell with you” to the rest of the world. The U.S. has
gotten rid of high U.N. officials when they wouldn’t follow US bidding.
Concerning the environment, for example, we’ve gotten rid of more than one
official who would not cater to US wishes. People like Mary Robinson, the
former Irish president, from her position at the U.N. I’ve got a long list
in Rogue State.

Q.
I’ve
got to tell you, before I met you, I was expecting something of a
firebrand. Instead, you’re soft-spoken, gentlemanly, kind of professorial
-- a good listener. Though we’ve only met twice, I sense you’re a straight
shooter, a man who doesn’t pull his punches. I’m wondering: How does a guy
like you get to be a guy like you? Tell us about yourself --

A.
I’m
not really that soft-spoken. The reason I’m that way in public is, if I
get too excited and I speak too fast, my speech is not as clear as it
might be. I have to speak slowly and calmly to be coherent … I have a
temper … You mean how I became this way personally or politically?

Q.
Both …

A.
Well,
it’s a long story. I’ve written a . . . I have a political memoir which
goes into that in great detail, it’s called West Bloc Dissident (as
opposed to an East Bloc dissident!). See, I’m a product of the Cold War.
My politics stems from the Cold War. I’m always looking to counterpoise
the propaganda I was raised with -- the anti-Soviet, anti-Communist
propaganda -- that’s very much a part of my thinking.

Q.
You’re
called an historian on the cover of your books, on the book jackets. Are
you trained as an historian?

A.
No.
Oddly enough, I’m self-taught.

Q.
The best of us are!

A.
In
college, I majored in economics and accounting. I worked as an accountant,
worked for CPA’s, and then I went into computers in the early ‘60s. I was
in on the ground floor. If I had never left that field, I would be a
multi-millionaire today -- I was really good at it! I spent four years at
IBM. Then I spent two years as a systems analyst and programmer at the
State Department working with computers, but my reason for being there was
otherwise: I wanted to become a foreign service officer. Because I was
still a good, loyal anti-Communist -- this was the mid-‘60s -- and I
wanted to join the anti-Communist crusade. So I took a job with the State
Department, biding my time until I could take the foreign service exam.
But, a thing called Vietnam came along and changed my mind completely. I
left the State Department, and I became one of the founders of the
Washington Free Press, the first alternative newsweekly in
Washington. That’s where I began writing. The rest, as they say, is
history…

Q.
So …

A.
But I
didn’t write my first book -- at least I didn’t have my first book
published, until I was a pretty advanced age -- I was, um, 53. I think of
myself as the Grandma Moses of Radical Writing!

Q.
I
don’t think anyone will confuse you with Grandma Moses! One more
diversionary, personal question. I was surprised to learn that you had a
stint as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Do you have any delicious or
pernicious insights about that?

A.
Yeah,
that’s also explained in detail in
West Bloc Dissident. I’d sent a copy of my first book, Killing
Hope, to Oliver Stone and he invited me down to speak to him. He told
me he wanted to make a documentary based on that book. So I moved to
Hollywood, and I was there working on this film for six months. It’s a
long story, but it didn’t come to fruition. I had the best-paying job I’ll
ever have for those six months, though. Then I stayed on in Hollywood for
seven more years. I completed three scripts, but none was ever optioned,
so I must say that my career in Hollywood was a failure -- except for the
money I made on Stone’s project. Hollywood is full of people who “express
interest.” They can “express-interest” you to death!

Q.
Much
of American culture seems to me a game of images, smoke and mirrors,
fraud. “Expressing interest” to the point of death! I’d like to talk
about fraud, getting back to the Cold War, you’ve written that, “The Cold
War . . . as a moral crusade . . . was always a fraud. There was never any
such animal as the International Communist Conspiracy. There were, as
there still are, people living in misery, rising up in protest against
their condition, against an oppressive government . . . most likely
supported by the U.S.” I know that you were in Chile, and you’ve seen that
aspect of the way our government intervenes and overthrows other
governments -- and that was all part of the so-called Cold War. What were
your personal experiences? Did you suffer the consequences of the coup
directly?

A.
I was
in Chile for eight months. I left before the coup took place -- which may
have saved my life because the two Americans who were killed in the wake
of the coup were friends of mine … But I was back home in California when
the coup took place, and I was, I was very upset by that. And that, that,
played a role in the formation of my politics.

Q.
Let me
continue in this vein on the Cold War. You’ve written that we need to
re-define the Cold War, see it not as an East-West struggle but as a
North-South struggle. I personally think that since the end of the Cold
War we’ve been suffering from a sense of triumphalism -- we defeated this
major boogeyman, the Evil Empire, and ever since it’s been hard for reason
to prevail, for dissident voices to be heard -- the idea of can-do
America, the beneficent protector of civilization and democracy. But, if
we re-calibrate, if we re-define the Cold War, as you suggest, then a very
different picture emerges. Then we see more failures than successes. Can
you help us to see the Cold War through your eyes?

A.
I tend
to view American foreign policy -- and the whole world, in fact, and all
of life -- I tend to view this from a moral point of view. Which is not
the sole province of people who are religious. One can be non-religious
and still have a very moral point of view. From a moral viewpoint, the
world and the U.S. did not win anything by “winning the Cold War.” The
average person in the former Soviet Union and satellites is much worse off
today than they were under the Soviet Union. Like the average person in
Iraq is much worse off today then they were under Saddam Hussein -- which
says a great deal! US policy does not make life better for people. They
went around the world during the Cold War stamping out one attempt after
another at improving people’s lives … The Cold War has always been sold to
us as, “We are the good guys and the Commies were the bad guys and the
good guys won.” But it’s a total fabrication. I have one chapter in
Freeing the World to Death -- I go from one year to the other in the
‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, showing examples of the foolishness and the
nonsense of the Cold War -- all the crazy things which the average person
today under the age of 30, say, is hardly aware of. That was really an
absurd period of US foreign policy.

Q.
You’ve
written that we have “a foreign policy establishment committed to
imperialist domination by any means necessary.” (Therefore, we can assume
that there’s no real difference between Bush, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, etc.)
Your books are as critical of Clinton and Carter as they are of both
Bushes and Reagan. Many people have heard of the Peter Principle, but
you’ve got your own take on it. Please define it according to William
Blum.

A.
The
Peter Principle
was a book that came out in the ‘60s, maybe the ‘70s, which said that in a
corporation or in some institution, an employee rises to the level of his
incompetence, and I suggested that in a foreign policy establishment
committed to world domination at any price a person employed by that
establishment reaches the highest level of cruelty that they can live
with. To put it in simple terms, US foreign policy is cruel, it causes
great hardship all over the world. The people who carry out those policies
rise in the institutions to the point where they reach a level of cruelty
beyond which they can’t go, where it’s too much for their conscience. The
cruelest ones claw their way to the top!

Q.
You’ve
said that they rise to the level of their amorality. And you make a
distinction -- you say it’s not even that they’re immoral, because they
think they’re fine. It’s just that they have no morals --

A.
They
don’t care. Of course, everybody like that rationalizes that what they’re
doing is really for the betterment of the world, or at least of the
American people.

Q.
You
cited Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement to Leslie Stahl that the
death of half a million Iraqi children under our sanctions was “worth it.”
You wrote: “These leaders are cruel because only those willing and able to
be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in
the foreign policy establishment.” Following up on this -- you’ve touched
on this just now . . . after the 9/11 attacks, many Americans asked in
bewilderment, Why do they hate us? You address that. You write that there
is a myth about America, woven so deeply into the fabric of our national
consciousness that it’s a given -- and the myth is that, though we often
make mistakes, our intentions, unlike those of other nations, are
always honorable, we always mean well. What is the genesis of that
myth? How has it been perpetuated and how can we begin to dispel it, to
lift the veil from our eyes, to understand the Cold War, etc., foreign
policy, etc., to see the world clearly?

A.
As to
the genesis, I imagine it goes back to the founding of the nation. I mean,
if you read the Declaration of Independence that really paints a picture
of a very noble people engaging in a very noble undertaking. I have been
moved by it. The whole world has been moved by it . . .

Q.
You even mention that Ho Chi Minh cites our Declaration
--

A.
Ho Chi
Minh used the opening words of our Declaration of Independence for his
Constitution in Vietnam. Despite that, he was regarded as an enemy till we
wiped out . . . that shows the insanity of anti-Communism . . . It didn’t
matter whether he admired our government and our way of life. He was a
“Commie” and he had to be punished.

Q.
My
feeling is that the Declaration of Independence is a great document, but
by the time we come to the Constitution, we’ve got something else
entirely. Then we become a very conservative nation and it’s all about
property and so forth.

A.
Even
in the Constitution you have many famous phrases, beginning with “We the
People” and so on.

Q.
That’s
about the best thing in there, isn’t it? Between The Preamble and the Bill
of Rights, it’s mostly about protecting property rights through the
Electoral College, limiting the franchise, etc.

A.
I
haven’t checked it recently, maybe you’re right. Okay, let’s stick with
the Declaration. That probably went a long way in instilling in Americans
the belief that we mean so well. I’m sure you can find that belief in
other nations, but it’s probably fed here more than anywhere else.

Q.
And I
think that continuous feeding of the myth helps us understand how we get
away with so much invidious foreign policy year after dreary year. So,
foreign policy, then . . . you’ve written and spoken about our crusade
during the Cold War . . . How did our crusade against International
Communism morph into our crusade against Islamic nationalism?

A.
There’s not much difference. They’re both the Empire getting very upset
with any obstacle in its way. It doesn’t matter who the people are. Often,
people on the Left claim that our foreign policy is racist, that we invade
and bomb people of color. But I don’t share that view. The most sustained
bombing since the 2nd World War was 78 days non-stop bombing of
Yugoslavia -- a white, Christian, European people. I don’t think the
Powers that be in the U.S. are anti-Muslim. What individual leaders in
Washington may think is one thing. Some of them, I’m sure, are racist --
on a purely personal basis. But we cannot confuse that with the policies
that come out of Washington. Those policies are color-blind and
religion-blind, and they are aimed at stopping any obstacle to the
expansion of the Empire.

Q.
So,
you don’t see this as a Christian Fundamentalist-Zionist-Wall Street
Alliance against the world?

A.
It may
be that -- but it’s not motivated by racism. The Christian Fundamentalists
who support Bush and support Israel -- they’re looking forward to --
what’s that term when you rise to Heaven?

Q.
Rapture?

A.
They’re looking forward to Rapture. And Rapture supposedly will come only
after Armageddon and other things related to Israel. These fundamentalists
tie in supporting Israel with the coming of Rapture. And that is not
because of any anti-Muslim feelings per se or because of racism.
But, individually, I’m sure people like Cheney -- I can’t imagine him
having any sort of tolerance for non-Christians or Muslims, but I think it
would be a mistake to assume that that’s what motivates US foreign policy.

Q.
It’s
about power? It’s about money?

A.
It’s
about corporations. The corporation is the leading unit of these
institutions. Ralph Nader has it right. Ralph Nader’s whole campaign, his
whole thrust, his writing is based on pointing out how the corporation
infects and poisons every aspect of American life -- domestic and foreign.
It’s the corporation which is the chief devil in this whole scenario.

Q.
Getting back to our history, it’s worth remembering that 1776 saw the
Declaration of Independence and also Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations
published the same year. I’d like to have your reaction to some recent,
official statements. I often lament that we don’t have reporters with your
kind of historical background to question and rebut the spinmeisters, so
here’s your chance. On March 28th, Donald Rumsfeld addressed
the Army War College, where he said: “From time to time, one hears the
claim that terrorist acts are reactions to particular American policies.
That’s not so. Their violence preceded by many years operations in
Afghanistan and Iraq, and their violence will not stop until their
ideology is confronted.”

A.
The US
policies that are being retaliated against go back to the early ‘80s, well
before 9/11. And there were retaliations well before 9/11. So, 9/11 is
just the most outstanding example of this phenomenon that has been going
on for over 25 years. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it’s the same
phenomenon all over the world. From the 1950s through the 1980s in Latin
America, the U.S. was doing terrible things -- the same as they did in the
Middle East. And in that period, some forty years, there were numerous
anti-American attacks in Latin America -- attacks upon US embassies,
personnel from those embassies, and many bombings of US corporations. This
happened in Latin America in the same way it’s happening now in the Middle
East, with the exception of suicide bombings. It works the same way all
over the world.

Q.
I’d
like to talk a little more about how we act in the world. For
example, your books indicate that we act through chicanery, bribery,
assassinations, fraudulent elections, death squads, etc. And we disguise
our actions. Would you tell us, for example, about the National Endowment
for Democracy.

A.
That’s
an organization that came out of a period in the 1970s when many misdeeds
by the CIA and FBI were exposed. Almost every day there was some
revelation about a serious misdeed. In the minds of the Power Elite, it
reached a point where something had to be done. What was done -- and, of
course, nothing changed in our foreign policy -- what was done was to form
a new organization, one with a nice-sounding name, the National Endowment
for Democracy, which would continue to do many of the things the CIA had
been doing, but the N.E.D. would do them somewhat overtly, therefore,
hopefully, losing the stigma attached to CIA covert activities. For the
past 25 years or so, the N.E.D. has been carrying out operations all over
the world, in the same fashion the CIA did -- interfering in elections,
overthrowing governments, suppressing movements not favored by Washington
-- they’ve been doing these somewhat openly. They hand out grants, and
they publish lists of the grants they disburse, so in that sense it’s
open, one can see who’s getting the money. Of course, they don’t tell you
how the money is actually spent or what the effect of that spending
actually is. I’ve followed the money trail and document in my books how
the grants don’t further democracy, but just the opposite -- the money is
used to overthrow democratically elected governments.

Q.
Again,
we want to maintain the myth of our integrity, our good intentions, but
your books reveal the other side. I have another recent comment by
Rumsfeld. In a report in the March 29th UK Telegraph,
Rumsfeld was asked about the US/Iraqi raid on a Shia mosque resulting in
the deaths of 21 unarmed worshippers and an imam. Rumsfeld disparaged the
claims about unarmed worshippers being killed, responding, “The US
government has not got to the point where we are as deft and clever and
facile and quick as the enemy that is perfectly capable of lying, having
it printed all over the world, and there’s no penalty for having lied.”
Have we gotten to that point?

A.
We got
to it decades ago. There are many entire books based on the lies of George
Bush and other leaders of the U.S. My books deal with many of the lies,
but not so much on a personal basis. I’ve documented the lies involved in
our foreign policy. We are the masters. I give many, many examples in my
book, Killing Hope, of the lies we’ve employed. We have it down to
a fine science, the way we would plant articles in newspapers -- and we’re
still doing the same thing in Iraq. But now it’s being revealed much
sooner. Which is a good sign. That’s one reason I can be optimistic.
Things are exposed much sooner now than before.

Q.
Thanks to the Internet?

A.
That’s
one of the most hopeful developments!

Q.
The
last question relating to Rumsfeld . . . at the Army War College, about
critics of the war, he said: “They say that a retreat from Iraq would
provide an American escape from the violence. However, we know that any
reprieve would be short-lived . . . The war that the terrorists began
would continue, and free people would continue to be their targets.”

A.
This
“war that the terrorists began,” as he puts it, didn’t exist before the
American invasion and occupation. That by itself is reason enough to pull
out. I think the violence would very quickly come to an end. I don’t think
the people of Iraq have a need for this kind of civil war. They have a
need for peace and quiet and sovereignty. They certainly don’t have
sovereignty now. Just last week the White House gave a clear message that
they don’t want the man who is now Prime Minister, to continue in office!

Q.
Jaafari?

A.
Umm .
. . the fact that Washington can say that to the world, unashamedly, says
everything you need to know about sovereignty there.

Q.
I’ve
asked you to be a reporter at a press conference, now I’d like you to be a
surgeon. You’ve written: “The American mind is, politically, so deeply
formed that to liberate it would involve uncommon, and as yet perhaps
undiscovered, philosophical and surgical skill.” How can we go about
liberating our minds?

A.
As I
said in a recent “Anti-Empire Report,” those people who are beyond surgery
or any kind of relief -- I estimate their number at 15% of the population
-- I suggest to activists to stop wasting their time on them. They will
not change even if the Government comes into their homes and kidnaps their
first-born and takes them away screaming … The other 85% are capable of
change if they get enough input. Some people can see how they’ve been
lied to with a single example. Other people need to be continuously
exposed -- on television, at rallies -- they need to hear certain messages
again and again. That’s why it’s a good thing to keep repeating certain
messages. I don’t appreciate that argument that you shouldn’t preach to
the choir. First of all, no one is born into the choir. So, it’s okay if
we repeat the same message in various media. I’m sure our numbers are
increasing all the time. The polls show that . . . I have faith that our
numbers will increase to the point where we’ll reach a critical mass and
then there will be fusion or fission.

Q.
I like your point about repetition. We take it as a given that the Big Lie
is repeated over and over. Maybe we need to repeat the Big Truth over and
over, too!

A.
Some
people have -- even though they are on the surface good, loyal Americans
-- they have many underlying doubts which they’ve harbored for many years,
and it takes just one spark to make them open their eyes for the “Ah ha!”
moment. For some people it takes one spark, for others it takes a dozen.
But we have to keep igniting those sparks!

Q.
Two
last questions … I’d like your comments on what Bush is now calling -- I
suppose he thinks he’s being witty -- the “question du jour,” US
policy on immigration, guest workers, etc. How can Progressives turn this
issue to our advantage?

A.
You
mean to the advantage of the immigrants? Not to our --

Q.
Well,
here’s what I’m thinking . . . I saw a half a million get into the streets
in Los Angeles. And I’m thinking, one month before that, the best the
anti-war movement could manage was 50,000 people in the streets. What’s
missing? Why aren’t we linking up?

A.
It’s
more personal with the immigration … those people there, almost everyone
of them -- if not themselves, then their father or their brother or their
son -- was or is an illegal immigrant and it really hits home. It’s like
in Vietnam in the ‘60s with the draft that really hit home. It brought
many parents out into the streets because they were afraid of their sons
being called up. So, the answer to your question is that we have to find a
personal angle and, in the absence of the race issue and the absence of
the draft, that’s not easy to find. Even so, we had millions of people
marching against the war -- that’s pretty good! On the question of
immigration, I’ve yet to see anyone pointing out what I pointed out in my
“Anti-Empire Report” how many of these immigrants have come here to escape
an economic situation made worse by US policies. They’re escaping the
results of US foreign policy in Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico,
Honduras -- so we do bear responsibility. It’s not simply that they want
something for nothing and have no right to anything. They’ve been hurt by
our policies -- even though the average immigrant is unaware of that! We
owe them something because of our policies -- including NAFTA.

Q.
I’m
talking about awareness, too. I think there’s a lack of awareness on the
part of the Left that the anti-war movement and the pro-immigration
movement -- if you want to call it that -- have a linkage. And that
linkage is -- those policies. Those predatory-capitalist policies that are
destroying the world.

A.
And I
wonder if, at the mass march in L.A., any of the speakers mentioned this?
I imagine someone did, but I don’t know.

Q.
I just
think it’s a point that needs to be driven home and repeated over and
over: We’re on the same page here!

A.
And
that takes away many of the arguments of the conservatives -- that people
have to earn their right to live here, and get jobs and all that. They’re
just divorced totally from what the US government has done.

Q.
They’ve been earning that right for many years -- decades, even -- and
they’ve come to that critical mass where they realize, you know, we’re
just being exploited here, we’re doing all this shit work and getting
nothing.

A.
Yeah,
but that, that is not the motivation behind this recent uprising or
protest. It’s just this bill in Congress that’s the motivation. It’s not
the fact that they’re under-paid, which they are, of course.

Q.
I just
would like to see people on the Left reach out to all kinds of other
people and embrace their causes. I don’t think there’s enough of that in
the anti-war movement.

A.
I
don’t . . . I think the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition certainly has embraced it.
A.N.S.W.E.R. in San Francisco, they’ve given much publicity to the march
in L.A.

Q.
OK,
last question: Your books describe an American government and media
divorced from the everyday reality of the American public. You write about
the “great irony” of the “free enterprise system.” Most Americans have
knee-jerk responses to words and phrases like “socialism” or “free
markets,” but when we don’t use these highly charged words and phrases but
describe helpful social programs, such as Medicare or Medicaid, a minimum
wage, a living wage, unemployment compensation -- we find a more positive
range of attitudes. Do Americans really believe in “free enterprise,” and
what is “the great irony”?

A.
By a
remarkable coincidence that’s the name of one of the chapters in one of my
books!

Q.
You
have the floor . . .

A.
Yeah,
I posit that question, and I answer it in the negative -- I don’t think
they really do believe in “free enterprise” and that is “the great irony”
since our leaders would have us believe that “free enterprise” is written
into our genetic code. But you can show people that many of their
attitudes are actually in conflict with the idea of “free enterprise.”
They are opposed to corporations coming into their neighborhoods and
replacing their favorite coffee shop or pharmacy or what have you. They
think that’s a shame. But that’s what corporations do. That’s what they’re
supposed to do, they’re supposed to expand, to grow -- that’s the nature
of the beast. And if you don’t accept that, then you’re questioning the
nature of the beast!

William Blum
left the State Department in 1967 because of his opposition to what the
United States was doing in Vietnam. He has been a freelance journalist in
the United States, Europe and South America, and has been a recipient of a
Project Censored award for “exemplary journalism.” His books include,
Rogue States (recommended by Osama bin Laden in his January, 06
audiotape); Killing Hope; Freeing the World to Death; and, West-Bloc
Dissident. He can be contacted at:
bblum6@aol.com.

Gary Corseri
has taught in public schools, prisons and universities. His work has
appeared at DissidentVoice, CounterPunch, CommonDreams,
The New York Times, Village Voice, City Lights Review,
Atlanta-PBS and 200 other websites and publications. His books include,
Manifestations and Holy Grail, Holy Grail. He can be
contacted at: corseri@verizon.net.